Trump is as ignorant as sin, in fact, he may be the literal embodiment of sin, but I digress. Trump doesn't know anything about Iran and I'm sure couldn't find it on a world map, but he gets all of his misinformation from Fox and Friends and they are telling him that Iran is evil, evil I say. Someone above nailed it - this isn't about the U.S. and Iran, it is all about Israel. Iran doesn't have one nuke while Israel has hundreds. Who is the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East? We need to invade and occupy Israel, the real source of problems in the Middle East!

I agree with William, Professor Cole - the "raccoons in your garage eating garbage" phrase is so perfect and so funny, I almost wet myself! It perfectly captures the rottenness of Trump and his henchmen. Deserves a re-tweet! Well done! The fact that these sleazeballs were conspiring with an unelected Muslim dictator to overturn a standing U.S. foreign policy before even having the authority to do so is both ironic and horrifying!

Why this empty-headed criminal isn't in prison is a testament to how the "capture" of greedy politicians by special interests has allowed white-collar criminals to go unpunished. Scott is a moron and doesn't understand basic physics and earth science that most eighth-graders know.

spyguy is correct. To put a finer point on it, the concept he refers to is Energy Return On Energy Invested or EROEI. When the ratio of the amount of joules or kilojoules to extract and produce a fuel approaches 1 or less, it makes no sense to use that fuel. When oil was first found in Pennsylvania in the 1800s, four men with foot pumps and fifty foot of pipe could extract oil from the ground. Those deposits are gone. Now, a monstrous rig has to be towed 50 miles offshore into the Gulf of Mexico and thousands of feet of pipe must be turned using huge engines through a half mile of seawater to extract the stuff! The energy derived, as compared to the energy expended, to get the filthy stuff is approaching breakeven. Donald Trump has no more grasp of the concept of EROEI than the man in the moon.

Great post, Prof. Cole. Unfortunately, many Americans are innumerate, as well as illiterate. They have no concept of numbers and the relative costs of things the government spends money on. They have been hornswaggled and bamboozled by the right-wing noise machine to believe that all their tax dollars go to welfare, not to the military. I had a conservative friend tell me that, red-faced, "if we didn't give all our money to welfare deadbeats, our military would have the money they need to win these wars!" As if the Pentagon has to hold up bombing sorties due to lack of funding. People are ignorant.

The inherent inelastic nature of secondary and tertiary sources of fossil fuels (i.e. fracking and tar sands) means that oil companies cannot react quickly to market signals (I.e. prices) to backfill lost primary sources where you stick a pipe in the ground and oil comes up. The huge capital outlays and lead times required to increase production of these sources preclude timely resolution of market shortages. Not only that, the low and falling EROEI on these sources of petroleum means our society's productivity is grinding toward zero. The laws of thermodynamics have not been repealed.

It is one of the most tragic ironies of modern history that a people who were the target of genocide less than 75 years ago, are now slaughtering innocent people with impunity. And it is American tax dollars that fund and support this slaughter - Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign aid. We should cut off all funding to Israel until they learn to live in peace with their neighbors. The oppressed have become the oppressors.

This is precisely why America needs a war tax and should reinstate the draft. We have made it too easy for these war-mongers to start a war and mask the true cost of it. If we immediately levied a 10% surtax on all income as soon as the first bomb was dropped or bullet fired, we would have a lot less wars. Further, if we reinstated a draft with no deferments (None!), the wars we did start would end a lot faster than they do now! Write your Senators and Representative and urge them to do both!

Prof. Cole, you are absolutely correct. I was appalled when I heard this propaganda being foisted on the American public by these two shills for the spooks. Utter nonsense! How are these foreign jihadis supposed to attack the U.S.? Are the planning to rent flotillas of pontoon boats and putt across the Atlantic Ocean to attack New York? If we have an Immigration Dept. doing its job, we should have no worries. Anyone who hears this nonsense and is scared, has a malfunctioning bullshit detector!

George W. Bush fatuously asserted that the 9-11 terrorists attacked us because they hate our freedoms". They attacked us because we (the U.S.) supports the reprehensible Israeli government commits atrocities like these!

Absolutely right, Prof. Cole. Petroleum is an environmental and economic dead-end. People have been bamboozled into believing that fracking and mining tar sands will give us huge, unlimited new supplies of oil, when all they prove is that our dependency on fossil fuels is chronic and terminal. It's like a crack addict scraping his pipe to get one more hit.

Professor Cole, a very thoughtful and incisive analysis. This should be on the editorial page of every major newspaper in America. Of course it won't be because the average American is dumb as a stump and thinks that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Usama bin Laden and that al-Qaeda attacked us because "they hate our freedoms".

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